


One Last Breath

by jaclinhyde



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: David Tennant - Freeform, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-07
Updated: 2014-08-07
Packaged: 2018-02-12 04:25:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2095689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaclinhyde/pseuds/jaclinhyde
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This story is one of the finalists in a Doctor Who short story competition benefiting Aids research.  It is an original work by yours truly so please no 'borrowing.'  It is a stand alone story which I may or may not continue sometime.  Any and all comments welcome, thanks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Last Breath

**Author's Note:**

> The 10th Doctor is imprisoned by the Cybermen and tortured. In order to get himself and his cell mates out alive he has to make the ultimate sacrifice, his own life.

One of his cell mates was rattling the bars of the cage again as if doing so 132 times would actually be any different than the first time he tried it. He knew it was 132 because he had fallen into counting them; after all he had nothing better to do. He looked down at his worn sneakers and crossed his long legs for the 132nd time. It was the only distraction he had other than trying to think his way out of a Cyberman cell where the bars were made of trinealium and he was doomed like the other 9 people in this cramped little space to have their bodies brutalized at any moment. He often told people they should have their heads examined and he now wondered if the joke was really on him all along. He had landed in this little forgotten part of the galaxy about 3 days ago if the grumbling in his stomach was any measure of time. He reached into his suit pocket instinctively to try to will his screwdriver to be there but magic wasn’t on his side tonight. To be honest food would be a nice thing to have right about now. Cybermen weren’t known for their manners. None of the usual pleasantries like ‘would you like some cake with your torture?’ Thinking about it the others in his little cell were the lucky ones. They would probably be driven mad soon after the onslaught began while he would be howling in agony until the very end of the procedure. Would he beg for mercy? He doubted it. He would beg for mercy for his innocent cell mates before he would beg for his own life. 

The irony is that his Tardis wasn’t all that far away. Just around the corner in a holding area where no one seemed to frequent. It was hidden, blending in with its surroundings perfectly. It might as well be on a different planet at this point for all the good it does him. In fact, just knowing it was so close but so unreachable was probably the most painful part of it all. He had stumbled upon the ship while merely minding his own business and didn’t think twice about investigating it considering it wasn’t a classic Cyberman hypership. In fact it didn’t have any markings at all to identify it which made it even more of a curiosity. He should have known something was wrong from the moment he poked his head out of the Tardis to look around. He should have seen the writing on the wall, literally, that was in cryptic Cyber-speak. Even the Tardis was uneasy; she moaned and groaned as he put her in a stasis field, hiding her from prying eyes. He walked just a couple of yards to the bend in the hall and there were two Cybermen standing on either side of him. Next thing he knew his pockets were being emptied before he was tossed into this holding cell with these other poor souls. Judging by how thin and weak they looked he guessed that he would not be fed for a very long time. 

He could hear that ominous thud thud of Cybermen coming towards the cell. ‘You will stand back from the cell door’ one of them said to his cell rattling friend. The bars slid open and they came inside just far enough to grab the first person they could reach, a Jadoon named Tev. Each took an arm in a steely claw and dragged him back through the door and down the hall. There was no time to escape as the lock slammed shut and bolted as soon as they were through it. Minutes went by where the pacing of his cell mates stopped and everyone strained to listen. Then they heard it. An ear piercing wail of pain came from the direction their comrade was taken. Then another and another. It went on for what seemed like an eternity then abruptly stopped. The metallic sound of steel against steel again as the pair of captures dragged Tev back to the cell, throwing him inside. Amazingly, everyone else began to pace again ignoring the wounded Jadoon lying in a heap in the middle of the floor. The Doctor went to him and examined him. 

“Tev” he said hoping beyond hope that he still had some of his faculties left, “can you hear me?.” He spoke in the Jadoon’s native language even though he had heard him speaking in english earlier. The beast’s eyes seem to focus for a moment on The Doctor but then drifted to parts unknown. 

“You will come” the Doctor looked up to see a metal finger pointed to his right in the direction of a little girl, “you will obey.” 

The Doctor rose from the kneeling position next to Tev and pulled himself up to his fullest height so that he was almost parallel to the Cybermen. 

“Take me instead” he told the metal giant in front of him. He looked into those cold, dead eyes and knew that no amount of reasoning was going to work. The Cyberman came into the cell and grabbed the little girl’s arm, making her cry out. The Doctor got between them and roared into the lifeless face,

“I said TAKE ME and not her” he shoved the Cyberman in the chest momentarily knocking him off balance. He caught the little girl as the Cyberman moved backwards and shoved her behind him. 

“Wouldn’t you rather take down a Time Lord than a small human?” now he was screaming at the metallic figure. 

He grabbed the Doctors arm instead and began pullng him out of the cell. The other Cyberman grabbed the other arm and together they began dragging him down the hall. He brushed them aside saying “I can walk, thank you very much” in his most sarcastic tone. Sarcasm was lost on his walking buddies as they gripped him even tighter. He already convinced himself that he would not give them the luxury of knowing that he was in pain. 

They walked him into a freezing cold room that was dark except for a few dim lights on the console behind a glass wall. Inside stood one lone Cyberman at the controls. 

“Did you ever hear the one about the Dalek who walked into a bar?” the Doctor said out loud as one of the Cybermen shoved him against a recess in the cold wall and the other closed the heavy metal gate in front of him. “Tough crowd” the Doctor said to no one in particular. 

At first he heard a loud hum which seemed to emanate from all around him growing louder by the second. The locked bars began to vibrate ever so slightly as the wave of sound strengthened and became more focused around him. Suddenly he felt a crushing pain throughout his body as the sound intensified, piercing him like a dagger. He could not move out of the line of fire because the little cell gave no room to turn around let alone to duck and cover. The sound grew softer momentarily just giving him enough time to bounce back before the second and more stronger wave took his body and knocked it against the wall. His eyesight blurred and his skull felt like it would cave in from the pressure. He howled in pain then, although no one could hear him above the wave. The pain became a full onslaught that made him feel as if every bone in his body was being broken. When level three commenced he forgot that he was going to be brave and screamed so loud and for so long that when the machine was turned off again he was hoarse and his throat raw. He had to tell himself to breathe in and then breathe out as if it was something that he suddenly could not do automatically. Level four took his pain into a whole different realm of agony. And this time it did not let up. His jaw snapped shut, the long bones in his legs and arms went from feeling broken to feeling crushed into sand. Then suddenly he felt the worst pain imaginable in his chest and he realized as if from a distance that his hearts had stopped beating. He clutched at his ribs moments before an electrical shock went through him emanating from the wall behind him. His hearts began beating again. He could not remember ever being so overwhelmed with agony, did not recall a time where he would have given anything and everything to just make it stop. He heard his screams as if in a distance, wished that he believed in a God to pray to, wanted nothing more than to give them what they had wanted if only they had asked him for some inner knowledge that only he possessed. 

He had entered the room with some fear but more of a curiosity as to what this pain would feel like. He wanted to retain that bit of himself but that went out the window when the knob of the machine was turned.

Beads of sweat soaked his forehead and ran down his face. He was standing out of sheer will when all he wanted to do was lean on the wall. Suddenly he did something his captors did not expect him to do. He laughed. 

“Oh don’t you wish you could break me that easily?” he spat out the words and kept on chuckling, He was in horrific pain but he would be damned if he would let them think they were winning. His laughter was one of a madman but not the way that they had hoped. It was defiant, full of bravado coupled with an unbending will. He was determined to take all the fun out of the torture for his metal friends. 

“Then we will put you back into the cell where the other experiment is ongoing.” 

He stood there arms outstretched waiting to be hauled back to the cell. They came over to him and hauled him from the tiny room. “Let’s see how long you all remain friendly after none of you are fed.” one said to him. The sound of the cell door again, the sensation of being practically thrown across the room into the wall on the other side and landing in a crumpled heap on the floor. He wasn’t down for long as he sprang to his feet like a cat ready to pounce. His Jadoon friend was still curled up in the middle of the room. He let himself feel hopeless, for the first time in what felt like a life time. He felt utterly frozen in the knowledge that he had reached the end of the road and that soon he will die at the hands of his captors. 

But even as that thought filled his mind another one was beginning to take shape. At first he just blamed it on what he had just went through but the more he contemplated it the more he knew, just knew it was their only hope. So many variables though. So many things could go wrong with his plan that the chance of success was near zero. But he was willing to risk it if he could get the cooperation of Tev and the other’s in the room. 

“Tev” he whispered in his ear, “I need your help getting out of here, can you wake up enough to help me?” 

Tev’s eyes looked up at him, a faint light shown in them. “What do you want me to do?” the Jadoon warrior said. 

“This is going to sound crazy but I need you to kill me.”

The Jadoon sat straight up and for a moment the Doctor thought he was going to laugh. “Kill you?” Tev said, “Did the treatment you just went through cause you to loose your mind?” he exclaimed. 

“Well not exactly kill me but come damn close.” the Doctor was serious enough that the Jadoon let him continue. 

“Tev, I am a Time Lord which means that unless I am killed quickly I can change my body. All my features change but not my memories, at least I hope not my memories this time around because I am relying on remembering where I am and what I have to do after I change.” 

He sat back and let the magnitude of what he was planning on doing wash over him. Now he was truly afraid. If Tev didn’t stop right at the moment of death then he would be gone for good. And if Tev did manage to do it right and he did regenerate would he be able to produce enough energy to break out of here once the change had begun? Can he hold onto himself long enough to get them the hell out there and into the Tardis? He looked again at Tev. 

“What I need you to do is to throttle me within an inch of my life, literally. As soon as my body senses that it is dying I will change, I will light up like a ball of flame so you have to keep everyone back. When the process is completed I will not look like this, I will appear as a totally different person. And act like one as well most probably. Just keep everyone away from me and the cell door when the process starts. When I start to emit a kind of liquid light you stop, ok? Can you do that?” 

Tev understood the request and felt the utmost honor for this stranger even if he did not understand fully what the end result would be. The Doctor stood up with his back to the Jadoon, facing the cell door. 

“Hurry up Tev, before I change my mind.” 

He took one final deep breath, the last one he probably would take in his present incarnation and closed his eyes. Memories came flooding back as Tev wrapped his strong arm around his throat and began to apply pressure. Thoughts of Martha and how she kept him safe when he was John Smith and the way that Donna showed him what compassion really meant. And then there was Rose. 

Ah Rose. He watched her grow from a curious girl to a brave and caring woman. Rose who made him better, the person he believed in above all others. He pictured her face and held onto to it even as his lungs struggled for air. He hoped he would remember her, he never wanted to forget how much he loved her. Funny he could admit that to himself now at the moment of death. If he couldn’t be honest with himself at these very last moments he knew he never would get another chance. He tried so hard to hold on to her face but it began to fade away as his body began to strain against the pressure from around his neck. From deep inside of himself he knew this was the bravest thing he had ever done. This was his defining moment in this timeline. He wanted to breathe, was desperate to fill his lungs again but slipped outside of himself and was able to watch the scene as if in a dream. He dropped to his knees with Tev still behind him, still squeezing his throat closed. The Doctor put his hands on the ground on either side of himself and did not move. Iron will suppressed the instinct to fight against the Jadoon. His body began to convulse and Tev could see an angry black and blue spreading on the Doctor’s neck.

It was at that moment that he began to glow and Tev could feel a blistering heat searing the flesh of his arm. He released his hold on him at that point hoping that he did not break his windpipe in the process. A massive intake of air could be heard from the Doctor as his closed eyes flew open and he looked at Tev, nodded and smiled faintly. He mouthed the words ‘thank you’ to him. Tev could not believe a person could say thank you after what just occurred. The Doctor looked down at his hands and saw the energy he was radiating and felt the build up inside. He could almost feel the cells of his body changing, bending and turning inside out. It was exquisitely physically painful, bringing back the memory of all the people who went before him. Now he would be one of them as well, just another memory. This was regeneration and there was no stopping it now. The emotional pain could not be discounted as the tears streaked down his cheeks from the deepest part of him that did not want to do this. He did not want to give up all that he had done and everyone he had known. In the past he could always relive his memories anytime he wanted to, so to have them ripped from him now was more painful than losing this life. 

‘Keep on task, keep on task!!’ he admonished himself as he struggled to stand

 

Tev went to assist and found himself trying to hold up the empty space inside of a blast furnace. 

“Stay back!” the Doctor warned. Tev noticed his face was changing, melting into something else. He was losing cohesion, becoming pure energy. The Doctor could feel the change grabbing at him, trying to carry him away. He refused to be swept up in it until he was finished with this life. He still had work to do. He placed his hands together, one next to the other in front of himself and then and only then let the internal pressure do its bidding. His life force became hotter than fire, as if he had become molten lava changing the very being it emanated from. Out of his hands this lava like substance exploded, pointed directly at the lock of the cell. All the bars blew outward from the force and what little remained began to melt. Two Cybermen came into the line of fire and melted into a pool of steel. Tev stared in absolute amazement at the destruction in front of him, stared until he almost forgot that all that destruction meant that they were finally free. He had instructed his cell mates before hand where to find the Tardis and to wait there for him. The Doctor could not walk. He had to finish regenerating before he could go anywhere. Tev for his part refused to leave him behind, knowing that he gave his life to free them all. Suddenly every part of the Doctor seemed to shatter and with a deafening scream a new man stood there looking very confused. 

“I feel like there’s something I am supposed to do” he said, looking at the Jadoon as if for the first time. Tev almost forgot what it was himself after having witnessed the birth of this person standing front of him. 

“You said you were going to take us all away in your ship, we have been imprisoned here by the Cybermen.” 

“Right, yes of course!” the knowledge came flooding back to him, “ Come on and hurry” he told his friend as he led he way to the Tardis. He could hear the thud of Cybermen as they moved toward their position. He pushed through the throng of people, stood in front of the entrance and instinctively snapped his fingers. The door to the Tardis flew open. 

“Get in” he told Tev as he pushed him through the entrance with the Doctor following close behind. He closed the door and breathed a sigh of relief knowing that they were finally safe. He started up the engines and the Tardis dematerialized from the Cybermen’s ship, spinning far away into time and space. 

“You were incredibly brave back there” Tev told him. The Doctor thought for a moment.

“Oh that wasn’t me. I suppose he did what he needed to do but I don’t know if I could ever do what he did.” the Doctor thought for a moment, “no, I couldn’t do that” He was like a child, speaking in riddles. 

He shifted some levers and pointed the Tardis to the Jadoon home world. 

“Next stop home for you my friend” the Doctor said, sounding more like the Doctor before. 

The Tardis set down in the middle a crowded street filled with Jadoon merchants. Tev opened the door and took one look back at the Doctor and saluted him, something only the most honorable men are worthy of from his race. The Doctor missed the salute entirely as he stared in concentration at a screen. Tev sadly left the Tardis behind. One by one the Doctor dropped his cargo of refugees home to their grateful families. Only when he was finally alone did he glance at himself in the mirror.

Nothing left of the man he used to be looked back at him. Except maybe a fleeting look of sorrow in his eyes that did not reflect the way this new Doctor felt. He removed the tie and found a decent replacement in a bowtie which covered the mark on his neck more fully. “Much better” he mumbled to himself as he put it on. Something caught his eye, something the Tardis had placed on the console that hadn’t been there a moment ago. One single red rose in full bloom just lying there. He picked it up and sniffed at it’s heady aroma. “I like this” he thought to himself, placing it back on the console where it rolled off and onto the floor. It meant nothing more to him than a new experience. 

And the man he had been knew he had sacrificed the one thing he never thought his new self would ignore. And with that thought he realized he gave up too much and disappeared forever.


End file.
